Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography. Charles Kingsley
and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, as well as for my sins in the opposite direction; but for these sins especially, because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others.
"For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many readings in the lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught me long before), that there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not caring what men say. Of course it is a feeling on which the spirit must fall back in hours of need, and cry, 'Thou, God, knowest mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I will speak; thou art true, though all men be liars!' But I am convinced that that is a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live; that it is only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest self-examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For otherwise, Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, in his determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God within him, and so he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there is a voice of God without him. He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men; he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise prophesyings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical.
"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own conscience and schema mundi, he loses the opportunity of correcting his impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs eclecticism, absence of tenderness for men, for want of sympathy with men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, have used both as instruments of their fanaticism.
"Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father, who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express that discontent at times. To make my children 'banausoi,' insolent and scoffing radicals, believing in nobody and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watchword of my house, 'Never mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are plenty of good people in the world; that public opinion has pretty surely an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage; and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man (sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men, and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have the blessing of God also; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently, and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be here still, though they had never been born or thought of. The antinomy between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle? but I shall not dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the earth, and not do the work which God has given them to do, because they will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick his congregation out of doors, and turn the key; and not like St. Paul, who became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some.
"Yours ever affectionately, with all Christmas blessings,
"C. KINGSLEY.
"FARLY COURT, December 26, 1855.
"I should be very much obliged to you to show this letter to Maurice."
One more letter only I will add, dated about the end of the "Parson Lot" period. He had written to inform me that one of the old Chartist leaders, a very worthy fellow, was in great distress, and to ask me to do what I could for him. In my reply I had alluded somewhat bitterly to the apparent failure of the Association movement in London, and to some of our blunders, acknowledging how he had often seen the weak places, and warned us against them. His answer came by return of post:—
"EVERSLEY, May, 1856.
"DEAR TOM—It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest; and don't cry stinking fish, neither don't hollow till you're out of the wood—which you oughtn't to have called yourself Tom fool, and blasphemed the holy name thereby, till you knowed you was sich, which you wasn't, as appears by particulars. And I have heard from T—— twice to-day, and he is agreeable, which, if he wasn't, he is an ass, and don't know half a loaf is better than no bread, and you musn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but all is as right as a dog-fox down wind and vi. millia passuum, to the next gorse. But this £25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him £10—hopes it may be lending—and have written a desperate begging letter to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T—— says to-night that he has written to Forster about it—which he must have the small of his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the ginger-beer bottle out the longer he'll fight, or else he'll throw up the sponge at once; for I know his pride. I think we can raise it somehow. I have a last card in old——, the judge who tried and condemned him, and is the dearest old soul alive, only he will have it T—— showed dunghill, and don't carry a real game nackle. If I am to tackle he you must send me back those letters to appeal to his piety and 'joys as does abound,' as your incomparable father remarks. When will you give me that canticle? He says Tom Taylor (I believe all the world is called Thomas) has behaved to him like a brother, which, indeed, was to be expexed, and has promised him copying at a shilling an hour, and will give him a chop daily free gracious; but the landlord won't wait, which we musn't neither.
"Now, business afore pleasure. You are an old darling, and who says no, I'd kick him, if it warn't for my cloth; but you are green in cottoning to me about our '48 mess. Because why? I lost nothing—I risked nothing. You fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's half-pay (nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than halfpence). I risked no money; 'cause why, I had none; but made money out of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a dirty beast I was. I made £150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had £100,000, I'd have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 1848–50. I should, Tom, for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet; but we ain't the boys. We don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see at all the policeman which is a going on his beat behind the bull's eye, and no thanks to us. Still, some somedever, it's in the fates, that Association is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will; only don't you think me a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch myself and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks; and if you were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye.
"Now to business; I have had a sortér kindèr sample day. Up at 5, to see a dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from 5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony—insensible to me, but not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at 8. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of pressure of the